Stress management at work is still too often treated as an individual issue. We talk about the ability to handle pressure or personal resilience, when in fact it is primarily a matter of work-related stress linked to working conditions in the professional environment.

In reality, stress is rarely a sign of individual weakness. When it sets in, it mainly reveals an imbalance in the organization of work: unclear priorities, poorly defined emergencies, a pileup of requests, contradictory orders, lack of arbitration or feedback. These stress factors produce daily pressure that can become chronic if not regulated.

This is precisely the aim of QWL and QWCT: to stabilize working conditions in order to enable sustainable performance that is compatible with mental health and operational requirements. Managing stress at work is therefore not about asking teams to cope better, but about taking action on the factors that shape their daily lives.

In this context, the manager plays a central role. They act as a regulator of collective stress, working on three concrete levers: the framework, the pace, and interactions. It is at this level that stress management becomes a lever for sustainable performance, rather than a human cost to be absorbed.

Clarify work to immediately reduce mental load

The primary source of mental load is not just workload, but ambiguity, which prevents prioritization and makes it more difficult to avoid stress and reduce stress on a daily basis. When everything is a priority, teams spend their energy arbitrating on their own. This cognitive overload directly fuels stress at work.

Prioritize explicitly to avoid cognitive overload

Voluntarily limiting the number of active priorities is one of the most effective ways to reduce stress at work. Focusing on a maximum of three priorities allows teams to make clear choices without having to constantly arbitrate on their own.

Prioritizing isn't just about listing what matters. It's a managerial act that involves explicitly saying:

• What is expected now
• What will be dealt with later
• What should not be treated

Concrete example
A manager replaces a list of fifteen topics with three explicit weekly priorities. The team stops operating in constant emergency mode. Employees regain their focus and reduce their mental load without any drop in performance.

Align the team on a shared understanding of the objectives

Collective stress often arises when the urgency is not defined in the same way by everyone. Without a shared framework, each person interprets expectations in their own way, which fuels tension and misunderstanding. Saying what is not a priority is therefore as important a managerial task as defining what is.

Aligning the team involves establishing a shared understanding of objectives, so that decisions are no longer based on individual interpretations but on explicit decisions.

Concrete example
In a team where everything was treated as urgent, a prioritization ritual was introduced at the beginning of each week. Goals were reformulated collectively. Stress levels decreased because everyone knew where to focus their efforts.

Regulate the pace to avoid constant urgency

A poorly regulated pace is one of the main factors contributing to chronic stress, which can ultimately undermine the physical and mental health of teams and increase the risk of burnout. Constant urgency is not a sign of high standards, but an indicator of imbalance.

Identify the signs of a toxic rhythm

A work pace becomes problematic when it is no longer controlled but endured, and when urgency ceases to be the exception and becomes the norm. This shift can be identified by very concrete signs in the team's daily routine.

Certain indicators do not lie:

• accumulation of minor emergencies that prevent any planning,
• hasty decisions and repeated mistakes,
• increasing relational tensions related to pressure,
• shared feeling of constantly running without ever catching up.

These signals indicate that the workload exceeds the team's actual capacity and that the pace is no longer sustainable in the long term.

Adjust the pace without compromising results

Adjusting the pace of work does not mean lowering standards, but rather making the effort sustainable over time. When the pace is under control, the quality of work is protected and pressure stops building up unnecessarily. In practical terms, this means making trade-offs: spreading out certain workloads, renegotiating unrealistic deadlines, or protecting periods of concentration, rather than piling up urgent tasks.

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Field example
A manager renegotiates a key milestone and spreads the workload over two weeks. The pressure eases, quality improves, and errors decrease, without compromising objectives.

A sustainable work pace does not depend on teams' ability to cope, but on simple and repeated managerial decisions. Practical tools for implementing these decisions are shared in the ebook Tools for cultivating a good work pace.

Establish managerial rituals to prevent overload

Establishing managerial rituals helps to pick up on subtle signals and is a key lever for preventing stress at work and reducing psychosocial risks.

Set up short points to capture weak signals

Signs of overload rarely appear suddenly. They set in when there is no longer any space to talk about the actual work. Regular check-ins, even very short ones, help to restore visibility where stress is silently building up.

These discussions serve to identify: 

• Where's the problem?
• What weighs most heavily in the load
• What becomes unclear or uncertain

And enable managers to identify imbalances before they become critical.

Concrete example
A ten-minute weekly check-in with each employee helps identify any emerging overload. The manager can then quickly make adjustments before fatigue sets in.

Continuously adjust expectations and workload

Stress increases when decisions remain implicit and trade-offs are not shared. Conversely, explaining managerial choices improves clarity and reassures the team. Continuously adjusting expectations and workload means making decisions visible: what is prioritized, what is postponed, and what is put on hold. This greatly reduces pressure, as teams no longer have to guess what really matters.

Concrete example
Thanks to these rituals, the team gains visibility. Stress decreases without any drop in performance, because everyone understands the choices that have been made.

Kindness and high standards: the key attitude for managers

Managing stress at work requires striking a constant balance between kindness and high standards.
Too much control stifles. Too much laissez-faire creates insecurity.
Managers don't eliminate stress: they help manage stress collectively, not through individual stress management techniques, but through clear trade-offs and structural decisions that make it easier to manage pressure over time.

Managing your own stress to set the tone

The way a manager handles their own pressure directly influences the team's atmosphere. Verbalizing their limits, explaining their decisions, and adjusting their priorities are not signs of weakness, but acts of leadership that allow the team to do the same. By showing how they regulate their own pace, managers set a clear emotional framework: pressure can be named, discussed, and adjusted, rather than endured in silence.

Concrete example
During a peak period, a manager explains why certain priorities are being postponed. The team dares to report tensions rather than suffer them.

Making clear decisions to protect collective endurance

Protecting collective endurance is not a matter of comfort or "soft" benevolence. It is a direct managerial responsibility. Saying no, interrupting a secondary project, or reprioritizing without feeling guilty are structural decisions that enable the team to endure over time. Not making decisions is tantamount to letting the workload pile up. And this lack of decision-making is often one of the primary sources of collective stress.

Concrete example
A manager suspends a non-strategic project to preserve the team's workload. Engagement increases because employees see that their mental health is truly being taken into account.

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Managing stress at work does not mean asking teams to cope better, but rather taking action to organize the workplace in order to reduce occupational stress in a sustainable manner. Clarifying the framework, regulating the pace, establishing managerial rituals, and adopting a benevolent yet demanding attitude creates the conditions for sustainable performance. This is how stress management in the workplace becomes a lever for collective performance, rather than a cost to be absorbed.

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